The Psychology of Word Meanings

by Paula J. Schwanenflugel (Editor)

Overview

This volume contains perspectives from a collection of cognitive scientists on the psychological, philosophical, and educational issues surrounding the meanings of words and how these meanings are learned and accessed. It features chapters covering the nature and structure of word meaning, how new word meanings are acquired in childhood and later on in life, and how research in word processing may tell us something about the way in which word meanings are represented and how they relate to the language processor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805806618
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/01/1991
Series:	Cog Studies Grp of the Inst for Behavioral Research at UGA
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1400L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

Contents: G.L. Murphy, Meaning and Concepts. B.C. Malt, Word Meaning and Word Use. P.J. Schwanenflugel, B.G. Blount, P-J. Lin, Cross-Cultural Aspects of Word Meanings. J. Hampton, The Combination of Prototype Concepts. E.J. Shoben, Predicating and Non-Predicating Combinations. M.G. McKeown, Learning Word Meanings From Definitions: Problems and Potential. S.A. Stahl, Beyond the Instrumentalist Hypothesis: Some Relationships Between Word Meaning and Comprehension. D.A. Balota, R. Ferraro, L.T. Connor, On the Early Influence of Meaning in Word Recognition: A Review of the Literature. P.J. Schwanenflugel, Why Are Abstract Concepts Hard to Understand? C. Chiarello, Interpretations of Word Meanings by the Cerebral Hemispheres: One is not Enough.

Editorial Reviews

"This is one of the most interesting books I have read for a long time....On the evidence of this book, it is clear that significant work on lexical semantics is being done by psychologists, work that linguists cannot afford to neglect."
—Linguistics

"...quite interesting and well worth reading....for a representative overview of current ideas and research on word meanings in psychology, the present volume does quite nicely."
—Contemporary Psychology

From the Publisher